on dialect, cultural study, and learning hoodoo

In the comments section of an old post about a hotfoot spell given by a Hyatt informant, some interesting comments have unfolded which I think worth pointing out. The informant says, among other things:

Well, yo’ got three pieces of dat dog manure. Yo’ll commence wit dis one, say, “Now, ah’ll set chew heah dat chew cannot stay in dis house, “Under de Highest Name of de Father”. Ah’ll set chew [second piece] heah dat chew cannot stay in dis house. Yo’ll be ‘bliged tuh go, an’, “In de Name of de Son.”

Now, two readers just commented on this only recently. I was born and raised in the deep South so I guess I have some tunnel vision, because it honestly never occurred to me for a second that American people could misread or misunderstand the above. I guess my background is actually a hindrance in my communicating with readers sometimes.

One commenter is a non-native speaker of English – I completely understand how a non-native speaker of English could have trouble with the way Hyatt tries to capture the dialect of his informant. But coming from a native speaker – well, it blew my mind that s/he could actually think there was chewing involved in this spell. Sorry, hun, to pick on you, but I guess I now have a clearer understanding of why some teachers of hoodoo have to make it mandatory that their students actually *speak to an African American person,* because some people never have and never would and yet would think to undertake a study of African-American folk magic. The mind, it boggles. My takeaway point from this was, in part:

If you can’t understand the dialects of the people who perpetuate these practices, you can’t really study the sources, living or passed on. It’s part of why cat in her rootwork course encourages students to actually learn about African American culture(s) and requires that they interview people instead of just trying to learn from books (which *cannot* be done, not really, not thoroughly).

Just for the record, this spell does not involve any chewing. If you read the dialogue out loud to yourself, you might be able to “hear” what you are having trouble processing on the printed page.

An Aggressive Stop Gossip Spell (and some “hoodoo theory”)

This is a lot more trouble than you will usually need to go to. But I will often advise clients that a formula is warranted in their case, and that candle work is warranted in their case, and so they can work by dressing a candle with oil. They will often then write back and say "but what spell do I do," thinking, I suppose, that setting a dressed light is not a spell.

Setting a dressed light is a spell. And setting a dressed light can be extremely effective. Conjure is not like some ceremonial magic where you have to do a series of complicated actions and speak other languages and do things on a certain day at a certain time. Just light the darned candle and pray your butt off, seriously. Some folks make it harder than it has to be. If you want to use moon phases and days of the week and chants that rhyme, fine, but you don't have to, and not every professional worker does.

But if you want a more complicated spell with multiple moving parts, here's one. Don't ask me what to do if you can't get or don't want to work with animal parts – my advice will be "you aren't trying hard enough" for the first objection and "well, then, light a dressed candle" or "do a google search for stop gossip hoodoo" for the second. This is "bigger guns" than most cases need, but I figured I'd type it up since I performed it for a client recently, and I feel like I owe a non-complaining, informative post after all that lecturing I was doing 🙂

This is not the Court Case Beef Tongue spell, so won't worry about how you're going to tie the tongue back together after you shred it to pieces, or if you want to eat it after you put alum on it – you aren't going to do any of this stuff.

You need:

appropriate oil like Tapa Boca, Shut Your Mouth, STFU, Binding, etc. (not all Stop Gossip oils are suitable) – see below)*
target's personal concern, photo, and/or name paper
black candle and holder if needed
airline-sized bottle of whiskey
alum or aloes powder
red pepper flakes or hot sauce
knotgrass or devil's shoe string
some worms, or if you can manage it and stand it, some maggots or flesh-eating beetles
a beef tongue (larger), sheep tongue (smaller), or other animal tongue (ox tongue would work)
a razor blade, box cutter, or extremely sharp knife
a dish or saucer large enough to hold the tongue

Dress your candle. Light your dressed candle. (You can carve a petition on it ahead of time if you like – the emphasis should be on the slanderer rather than you. If you want to work a "protect me" petition, see below, at the end of this post. This is not a "protect me" spell.)

As you set the candle in the holder, say:
"See what they spew from their mouths–they spew out swords from their lips, and they say, "Who can hear us?""

Light the candle and say:
"I can hear you, and the Lord God my protector can hear you. I can see you, and your heart is transparent to me."

Set the personal concerns in the dish or saucer. Say:
"I see who devises evil plans in their hearts and stirs up war every day."

Baptize the tongue, using the whiskey to sprinkle it and baptize it in the name of your target. (Don't be a baby – if you are afraid to touch it, you shouldn't be doing this spell.) Hold it in your hand, sprinkle it with whiskey with your other hand, and baptize it "name", saying "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. [Name] I call you, [name] you are to me, and what I tell you, you, [name,] will do."

Lay the tongue in the dish atop the concerns and douse it liberally with whiskey. Say "No one who practices deceit will dwell in my house; no one who speaks falsely will stand in my presence."

Take your blade and make slow, deep, deliberate, precise cuts along the length of the tongue. You can match up a cut for each sentence or phrase below, or you can just slowly recite the whole while cutting. (If you think you need or want more things to say, consult Psalm 37 and Psalm 35 for ideas; just about every phrase in this spell comes from the Bible and most from the Psalms – the Bible contains some of the more ancient and powerful curses that have been preserved in writing. Just don't choose passages that are about the Lord as shepherd for this spell – you want good old-fashioned Old Testament smiting here).

"I am in the midst of lions; I lie among ravenous beasts–men whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongues are sharp swords. Not a word from their mouths can be trusted; their hearts are filled with destruction. I destroy their iniquity. I seize the weapon of my enemy. Your throat is an open grave; with your tongue you speak deceit. You use your mouth for evil and harness your tongue for lies. But I see through your lies, and the Lord God my protector sees through your lies. Your tongue plots destruction; it is like the sharpest razor, you who practice deceit. I curse the whisperer and deceiver, for you have destroyed many who were at peace."

At this point you should have a whole bunch of long, deep slits in the tongue. It's ok if it is still mostly held together and just looks shredded – it's also ok if you have cut clean through and you have more than one piece now. (This may depend on the tongue you have and your cutting implement, in other words – a box cutter will not do a quick, clean job on a six-pound cow's tongue. But it doesn't have to be "just so" – it just needs to be cut up well and good so it would be useless as a muscle.)

Take your herbs and sprinkle them liberally all over the tongue. If you have done the job right, you won't even have to try to get them into the cuts and slits, but you aren't aiming just for the cuts and slits – get your herbs all over it. As you are sprinkling, say:

"Now I am the sharpest razor, because I am able to cut all evildoers away from me. I am the strongest sword, because I remove all liars from my presence, and the Lord God my protector punishes your iniquity. Each day you did unrighteousness with your tongue and were greedy for the blood of the innocent. Now you are dumb and wounded by your own sins. You pay with your body the recompense for the evil deeds you worked with your tongue."

Sprinkle the worms or other critters on the tongue, saying:
"Worms shall chew you. Your tongue is burst open, your teeth divided, your jaws split apart, your throat torn open in the grave that it has become through your deeds. Your sinews are broken and your tongue is shredded by the worms that thirst for your blood."

Disposal depends on a few factors. I am a big fan of the old-fashioned method of leaving the ritual remains on the target's property, in which case I might just leave the entire saucer on their doorstep or under their porch, or maybe under a bush in their yard, or I might skip the saucer and hide the tongue in a tree on the property (in which case I might pin or nail any papers or concerns to the tongue first). If this might get you arrested, however, you can bury it in a cemetery or in the woods (and even do a little funeral ceremony over it – if you want to get fancy, and you are seriously okay with killing work, you can even do a Vigil for the Dead prior to this. Again, this is totally beyond what most cases call for and is not going to be justified in every case – I'm describing a case that was far more serious than usual. The worm thing makes most sense in these cases, since burial enacts the retribution you are describing in the spoken part of the spell. Yes, worms will find it on their own eventually if you bury it, but I wouldn't skip that part just because it required a trip to a specialty pet shop if I were a city-dweller).

Alternately, the more neutral disposal option would be at a crossroads.

Even when work like this is justified, spiritual cleansing afterwards is still recommended.

* I personally advise starting with Stop Gossip work before going as far as a spell like this – mojos, sprinkling powders around your workplace and bathing with Stop Gossip bath, etc. Even if you do resort to this spell, it's a good idea to pair this work with a protective bath or mojo for yourself, like Stop Gossip. The difference is that the target for the above spell is the gossiper, while the target for a Stop Gossip bath or mojo is you – you are applying protective elements to yourself in the case of a bath, and those ingredients are designed to get gossip to bounce or slide off you when you carry the bag or bathe in the mixture. So needless to say, the ingredients for this spell and for a Stop Gossip mojo or bath are not entirely the same.

Here you are not using slippery elm bark or the like because it's not a protective spell to guard you – it's an active, destructive spell to stop a gossiper. It's presumably justified, and you are presumably free from the sin of slander yourself (if you're not, then don't tempt fate by asking God to smite your slanderer), but you aren't working on yourself here. You are not the target. See the difference? Some traditional conjure formulas "work" on two targets, in two "directions," at the same time, like I Can You Can't and Commanding and Court Case, which have stuff in them to work on your success AND make your competition or enemy trip up. But not all do, and I just want to make sure nobody uses the above ingredient list to make up a stop-gossip bath for themselves, or thinks a Stop Gossip oil is necessarily going to have devil's shoe string in it. Most Stop Gossip products out there today have protective elements in them and are designed for you to use on yourself, and so they may not be what you want here. Some Stop Gossip spells work in two directions at once, to protect you and to silence your enemy. Some have elements of reversing rather than outright binding. But not all do. When in doubt, ask your supplier whether their oil is suitable for what you have in mind.

ETA: The Ninjacat has an example of a Stop Gossip spell that is a bit less aggressive (though certainly not from the "turn the other cheek" school of spellwork!) – and it's also an example of a spell that clearly delineates its "directionality," if you know what you're reading for/looking at when you read it. It is a Stop Gossip spell, yes, but it's not of the same variety as other Stop Gossip spells which also target you as part of the whole framework, versus being aimed solely at the gossiper. See the difference? You don't mix up alum and pepper and dust yourself with it. Note: I don't like to link to blogs or sites or posts when I am trying to make a point about how something is wrong or misleading, because – well, that's verging over into gossip territory! But if you do a search for stop gossip spells, you will likely find one that says to use cloves, chia seeds, alum, and slippery elm I think, all powered together, to stop gossip. If you don't know what you're doing, you might come away from this with the idea that both cloves and alum should be filed under "Stop Gossip herbs." Then you might be surprised later, and confused, to find a spell calling for cloves to be used in friendship or affection. (Follow the tags for an old post about a similar issue that crops up with sulphur, because people have got it in their heads that sulphur is for driving people away, and this results in even not-neophyte-workers getting confused when they come across an old deep South spell calling for sulphur to bring customers to a fish fry or sidewalk sale. Such things have caused some folks to decide that a certain Hyatt informant was wrong, or confused, or lying to Hyatt, when in fact, the modern, suspicious reader just has the wrong conceptual categories in his or her head.) Can cloves be used in Stop Gossip work? Sure! But it's not because "it's an herb that stops gossip" in the same way that alum does. Can sulphur be used in Goofering work? Sure! But it's not because "it's for driving people away" as such.

This distinction is often lost on "new converts" to hoodoo, who get the basic idea ("this is to stop gossip") but not the theory or directionality behind the work ("who is the target?") – and sometimes they will advise putting a traditional Stop Gossip formula on a target's belongings to *make them shut up.* I don't recommend this in most cases – I don't think Slippery Elm bark is a very strong deterrent of backbiting itself, but rather protective so that the effects of gossip slide off of you. Very often, Stop Gossip is the right approach in the workplace or in a large group of friends or family anyway, since gossip spreads and breeds among and within groups, and stopping one person will not usually stop the problem, just as stopping them from gossiping about you will not usually cure them of gossiping altogether – they'll just find somebody else to talk about.

But this issue of directionality is why you yourself bathe with Stop Gossip bath salts, but why Tapa Boca soap is usually slipped into the company washroom so *other people* will use it, as a sneaky trick. It all depends on what the ingredients in the formula are supposed to be doing, what "direction" they are supposed to be working in. Often, it is a good idea to work in more than one "direction," with the "carrot and stick" approach, to sweeten your enemies in general but also put the spiritual choke-collar on them so you can yank a knot in their ass when they overstep their bounds – but often (not always) you need to do this as two distinct workings. (Commanding alone does not always work like we want – in fact, it backfires on some folks, which is why I think many people are too quick to apply Commanding elements to their typical love situations, but that is another post.)

Magic takes the path of least resistance – if you can *get your target to want to do what you want them do,* that is going to be more successful work than forcing them to do something where they are fighting you every step of the way. So when Hot Foot isn't working, the next step should often be Attraction work (to draw a new, exciting opportunity that your target cannot resist, so they go happily) instead of busting out all the DUME and Plagues of Egypt work. Same with Commanding work in love – if you are not wrapping them around your little finger with your Follow Me work, then stop focusing on controlling their every thought, word and deed (which is not usually going to work anyway), and focus instead on working on you – boost your sex appeal, glamor, communication, passion, and general aura of "I am Irresistible and Awesome." You draw more flies with honey etc. It's often a better use of your time, money, and energy than is inventing new ways to get licorice root into their food, or in trying a new spell to tie their nature.

I know not everybody shares my view on this sort of thing and people often want what they want, but I'm not just speaking as someone who wouldn't want a relationship if that relationship had to be maintained through coercive magic being constantly applied, or as somebody who would not sic the Intranquil Spirit on somebody I actually loved. I am also speaking as a rootworker who has seen hundreds and hundreds of cases and has gotten a pretty fair idea of what tends to work and what does not. I *will* do all kinds of "heavy" work, IF it's justified AND if it looks like it will ultimately benefit the client, even if it is not work I would undertake for myself if I were in the client's shoes. But the "heaviest" work is not always the most effective work, and with some of that "heavy" work, it does not always ultimately benefit the client even it is wildly successful. But that, I suppose, is also another post!

Product “Instructions”: Dressing Candles, Skin Safety, Powders

I have been resisting writing this post for a long time, and I’ll tell you why. In part, it’s because there is already so much information easily available out there that my writing anything is redundant. Furthermore, there are tons of ways to use oils, and my giving “instructions” is akin to my giving instructions on how to wash your hair: seriously, dab the oil on something. Those are the instructions.

The details are up to you, how complicated you get is up to you, what object you rub the oil on is up to you. People use oils to dress candles, amulets, charms, pakets, mojo bags, stuffed animals, talismans, jewelry, pets, their own hair: the list goes on and on. See, when people ask me for instructions, what they are actually asking for usually is a *spell,* whether they realize that’s what they’re asking for or not. And they don’t think lighting a fixed, dressed candle with intent counts as a “spell,” so they’re asking for something more complex. Well, there are thousands of those out there free for the searching, and I unfortunately just can’t give out free spell advice to all queries or I’d be out of business fast.

But lots of people ask me for instructions, and some get upset with me when I tell them that my oils don’t come with instructions. But I tell them they can visit my blog for ideas and resources. So here you go: a post on how to use condition oils.

Dressing candles

I personally use a method similar to that outlined in Henri Gamache’s Master Book of Candle Burning. Not all rootworkers do this – there is more than one way to skin a cat. But this is what I do. In this book, which you can get very inexpensively and which is a good investment if you are interested in candle-burning magic, Gamache outlines a theory of “polarity” for candles.

Imagine your candle has a North pole (the top) and a South pole (the bottom). Gamache recommends that candles be dressed by rubbing the oil from the center of the candle to the North pole, and then the center of the candle to the South pole. He writes, “the candle is never rubbed in both directions toward both poles.”

Now, here is where my methods (and the methods of some other rootworkers) change a bit. When I’m dressing a candle with oils for the purposes of drawing some influence, I rub the oil from the North pole (wicked end) to the center, so that I’m rubbing towards my body as I’m holding the candle in my hand. Then, I turn the candle so the wick is facing me, and then I rub from the end with no wick to the center. Since I”ve turned the candle, I’m still rubbing *towards* me. And I’ve gone from top to center and then bottom to center with my dressing.

When I’m dressing a candle to get rid of an influence, I reverse this process, dressing from center to wicked end, then turning the candle, and then dressing from center to non-wicked end. Since I turn the candle, I’m always rubbing *away* from myself.

When I’m dressing a vigil or glass-encased candle, I go clockwise to draw/attract and counter-clockwise to “banish”/”get rid of”/repel.

Do you have to do it this way? No. There are other theories and other practices. But it’s what I personally do.

Some sites that discuss ways to use condition oils:

Dr. E on how to use condition oils (note that his method of dressing candles is slightly different, but equally valid)

cat yronwode at Lucky Mojo on condition oils

sources for candle-dressing philosophies at the Lucky Mojo forums (see? many ways to skin a cat)

Oils and Skin Safety – a very very very frequently asked question

I make ritual oils, not cosmetics. My products are designed for use on altar implements and talismans and the like, and to anoint objects and candles. They are not labeled or sold as cosmetics and I cannot possibly assure anyone that they won’t be allergic to any of the ingredients.

You see, there are laws about labeling cosmetics and body products and there are issues of skin safety with essential oils, as well. If you buy a condition oil or conjure formula that advertises itself as wearable/for use on skin and it is not labeled in accordance with FDA and INCI guidelines/nomenclature, then depending on how it’s made and how your seller is describing and marketing it, your seller could be headed for trouble for not abiding by the labeling laws designed to protect consumers.

Yes, lots of people put them on their skin. Yes, it’s quite traditional to do so, and if you have a truly traditional formula, it’s unlikely to cause problems unless you have an allergy to an ingredient, because traditional dressing oils were made with dilution levels for skin safety in mind. (A lot of them were actually derived from perfume formulas to begin with.) But that doesn’t mean you should go buying hoodoo oils and wearing them as personal scents willy-nilly.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but makers of hoodoo oils have mushroomed exponentially over the last 10 years and you cannot swing a cat now without hitting somebody selling Van Van and Hot Foot. Hoodoo has gotten really trendy. But a lot of these people learned hoodoo from books and many never saw or smelled an old-school, traditional hoodoo formula made before, say, 2000 (and in some cases, they never saw or smelled one period before they started making their own).

These folks will have no idea what the old-school formulas that tended to be made at skin-safe strengths by default even smelled like. And if they bring a penchant for Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab into this with them, or for Bath and Body Works, you could be getting absolutely anything when you get that bottle. No way in hell would I slather some random oil with no ingredients list from somebody who is an unknown quantity on my body. How do I know if they even know what bergaptene is? How do I know if they made this oil formula with the usual ingredients or if they’ve innovated, and so how do I even know how to check for skin safety? Uh-uh.

This is why my candles and bath/body products that contain no artificial fragrances often do not have as strong a scent as mass-produced, widely-available products that use fragrance oils – not all essential oils are safe for you to use in the quantity I’d have to put in there in order for it to smell like an artificially fragranced item would smell. Others are safe but not affordable in that quantity, or would interfere with a candle’s ability to burn properly/safely, for example.

So don’t expect your conjure stuff to smell like perfume necessarily – if it’s made only with essential oils, it probably won’t smell like anything from Bath and Body Works. That richly scented stuff almost always uses at least some fragrance or cosmetic oils, if only to make the scent last or to make the candle “throw” the scent.

But seriously, even if you are getting oils from somebody you know is making them traditionally and who has been around a while, you still shouldn’t think of them as perfumes. You anoint with them selectively rather than spritzing them all over. And you should always do a skin test for any new bottle even if you’ve used the formula before, because like wine vintages, every “crop” of essential oils can be slightly different.

I don’t care *who* makes it. Basically, if it’s not labeled/tested as a body product, use your head before using it on your body. And please do not fall prey to the myth that “synthetics are bad for you and natural things are good for you.” That is way oversimplified. Essential oils can poison you, and you can be allergic to them. Herbs and oils are powerful and must be respected. “Natural” does not mean “hypoallergenic.” “Natural” does not mean “harmless.” Arsenic and botulinum toxin are “natural” too.

So now that I made you wade through all that, you still want to wear the dang condition oils, yeah? I’d advise you to do some research on body-safe dilution levels for essential oils. Most “make your own herbal shampoo” type sites will give rough guidelines, though they will always vary depending on the actual oils in question and your own skin sensitivity. But they’ll give you some valuable info to use going forward. Some scents you could practically bathe in and others you need to be much more careful with. It’s smart to know which are which. And you should always do a skin patch allergy test (as you would before using a hair coloring product) because new allergies can develop.

As many conjure oils contain ingredients that can cause photosensitivity, you should never slather them on skin that will be in direct sunlight. Traditional conjure oils are not used this way, anyway; they are used for anointing, not as cologne or aftershave. Anointing means, for instance, that lightly-oiled hands are applied to the crown of the head for Crown of Success anointing, or on the forehead for Consecration, or on the temples for Memory Drops, stuff like that. In other words, they are applied in small amounts to ritually significant parts of the body, by getting the oil on the hands and then using the hands to apply/anoint, in ritual settings. They are not poured onto the skin.

You definitely don’t need to use gloves to use my oils (though I would not want to leave my hands unwashed for long if I were using hot foot or hexing oils; otherwise, just keep them away from eyes, mouth, etc). I use my own hands to make all my products, and to dress my clients’ candles and amulets with, and I’ve been doing so nearly daily for many years, so I don’t make my oils with anything known to be toxic when used as directed. I just don’t make them to be cosmetics or, God forfend, personal lubricants (and I have to say so, officially, because you would not BELIEVE some of the things people do sometimes – putting hoodoo oils on body parts where the skin is *way* too sensitive – which can land you in the emergency room with a really embarrassing problem — or putting powders into people’s food and stuff, just stuff that doesn’t make any sense). I have to try to head that stuff off at the pass and make it really clear.

A good (though very general and not hard-and-fast) rule of thumb is that if it smells of citrus, you should probably keep skin dressed with it out of direct sunlight. If it smells strongly of cinnamon or spice, you should probably keep it away from sensitive areas/mucous membranes and be extra careful about the skin patch test. If it smells minty, keep it away from your mouth and your children. Cinnamon essential oil can cause chemical burns, so use on skin with extra care. Wintergreen essential oil has beneficial and therapeutic uses when used in appropriate amounts by a trained qualified practitioner, but it’s not impossible to hit toxic levels of wintergreen when you’re talking about absorption through the skin, especially if you are also using over-the-counter remedies for things like arthritis, muscle aches, and the like.

Will wearing Red Fast Luck oil on your skin burn the piss out of you, or kill you if you’ve used Icy Hot the same day? Maybe not, but why take the risk, especially if you don’t know your condition oil manufacturer to be a person who designs it specifically for dermal application? Once you start adding various sources of dermal absorption, esp. in the form of products not designed for medicinal or therapeutic dermal use, it’s pretty hard to measure the amount you’re absorbing. (For a taste of how complicated it can be to measure dermal oil absorption, have a look at this discussion which starts generally and moves on to discuss eucalyptus, pennyroyal, and wintergreen in particular).

Icy Hot was made in a lab according to standards of safety for dermal use; Fast Luck oil was not. And chances are good that your hoodoo oil supplier, like me, is not an aromatherapist or medical herbalist. They make condition oils, not medicines. Now if you’ve got one you trust and you wear their oils, great! Good for you. I just want to encourage people to be cautious because some folks don’t actually know what they’re doing when it comes to oils and skin safety, and some aren’t aware that there are laws about this stuff that they’re breaking due to the way they advertise their products.

Powders

The point of my hoodoo powders is to let you deploy the desired formula in ways that need powder for deploying. They are designed for things like sprinkling in your target’s foot tracks or on the path they take to the parking lot so they’ll get it on their shoes, dusting an object or area where liquid dispersal would be impractical or attract too much attention, drawing sigils and symbols on flat surfaces, discreet dispersal in a larger area by blowing, leaving small discreet pinches in pockets, shoes, corners, and other appropriate places, fitting a multi-herb formula into a small space like a flat packet or toby, dusting papers or your hands before contact, things like that. It is traditional to call your target’s name, and/or murmur your petition or pray, as you deploy them.

They will not hurt you if you put them on your skin, but they aren’t cosmetics, aren’t made in accordance with cosmetic industry guidelines for ingredients or labeling, are not talcum-based, and will be grittier/coarser than talcum-based powders. They have actual powdered herbs in them, and if you think about it for a second you will realize that actual powdered leaves and stems often don’t make good cosmetics.

So if you are expecting a powder that is as finely ground as a cosmetic and that will make your skin really smooth, you will be disappointed with my powders. Some people do make talcum-based powders, which are quite traditional; it’s my non-talcum powders that are actually the less traditional version, but I have health reasons for not using talcum or making products with talcum.

They also aren’t sold as “pure herbal powders.” Traditional hoodoo powders have never been 100% herbal material – that’s a thing from European traditions or 20th century innovation or something. There are reasons why they’re made like they’re made, and it’s 100% bullshit that pure herbal powders are “better” – they’re different things that do different jobs. Powder that is made only of ground-up herbs tends to be too expensive to use in the traditional ways, a lousy carrier/absorber of essential oils, and more difficult to camouflage, just for starters.

For the truly old-school and/or purists among you, I do incorporate mineral elements whenever possible even though I don’t use talcum — and yes, this is another element of hoodoo powders not having ever been 100% herbal material. Mineral ingredients are often very important to hoodoo/conjure “recipes” and for some formulas, a powder without the mineral ingredients is no longer a hoodoo formula as it has missed one of the major, critical points. This is yet another reason you need to learn the traditions before you start trying to innovate – before you have internalized the traditions, you won’t even know what all you don’t know and you might be imposing a very ill-fitting paradigm onto hoodoo products that essentially takes all the power out of them.

I usually incorporate mica powders to address necessary mineral components that would have been handled with talcum traditionally, but since these powders are *not* designed to draw attention to themselves, I don’t overdo it, and you probably won’t be able to tell just by glancing at them. But I made my changes from tradition advisedly and with care towards preserving the underlying principles of traditional conjure formulation while avoiding unnecessary health risks from talcum.

Hoodoo condition oils are never meant to be consumed, and while few people would think to eat them, they often don’t think quite enough about what they do with conjure products. Hoodoo powders are generally not designed for putting in food or drink – use powdered herbs for this, not conjure powder formulas designed for sprinkling, dusting, blowing, or drawing designs. And if you want your lover to put his or her mouth somewhere, use products that are designed for that sort of thing. You can pray over them and add things to them, and that’s more likely to end up being fun and not involve a hospital visit than is risking using a condition oil as a personal lubricant.

Read more about powders and their history at Powders in Hoodoo: Theory, History, Contemporary Differences in Perspective and Region, aka “two rootworkers have a (polite, respectful, and interesting) argument.” Bonus history lesson on 18th century hairstyles and hygiene in the comments.

working with Maria Dolorosa, cont.

Ref. terminology, I’ll say this, though you all probably know it.

Maria Dolorosa — lit. Sorrowful Mary
Mater Dolorosa — lit. Sorrowful Mother
Virgen de Dolores — lit. Virgin of Sorrows
… and then there’s the English Our Lady of Sorrows etc.

The image frequently encountered for Our Lady Maria Dolorosa is the one in my icon – you can see the Mexican Catholic influence if you look carefully; she’s surrounded by milagros and that sword is really Spanish-looking.

If you’re Catholic, you’ll pray the Hail Mary, which I’ll reproduce for non-Catholic readers.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

And there are plenty of prayers to choose from in the Catholic tradition, some specific to Our Lady of Sorrows. There’s even a special rosary, which looks different than a regular five-decade rosary, for counting a set of prayers that deal specifically with Mary’s Seven Sorrows (technically a chaplet and not a rosary, but anyway). (I ought to make one of those one of these days.)

If you’re working with her, like many do in folk practice, for healing from sorrow and disappointment, especially in love, or maybe for drawing a healthy love into your life, or for nourishing broken dreams, then you will probably want to focus on the Sorrowful angle rather than a straight-up Hail Mary by its lonesome.

If I were calling on her for help with keen disappointment, for example, I might say a prayer like this one:

Pray for us, O most Sorrowful Virgin, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ. Amen. Lord Jesus, we now implore, both for the present and for the hour of our death, the intercession of the most Blessed Virgin Mary, Your Mother, whose holy soul was pierced at the time of your Passion by a sword of grief. Grant us this favor, O Savior of the world, Who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen.

In any case I would "talk to her," adding something about my own situation and petition. The possibilities are nearly endless, and there are some very good Catholic resources out there in internet land.

I have no idea if anybody cares about medieval flower symbolism for Our Lady, so I’ll save it 🙂